The Present Doesn't Have Any Time

Deseret (1995)
directed by James Benning
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats

Four Corners (1998)
directed by James Benning
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats

El Valley Centro (1999)
directed by James Benning
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats

Sogobi (2002)
directed by James Benning
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats

Ten Skies (2004)
directed by James Benning
rating: 5 out of 5 cravats

casting a glance (2007)
directed by James Benning
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats

RR (2007)
directed by James Benning
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats

Double Play: James Benning and Richard Linklater (2013)
directed by Gabe Klinger
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats

all on DVD from University of New Mexico Interlibrary Loan, except "Ten Skies," available here, and "Double Play," watched on the Criterion Channel
(most of Benning's movies are on YouTube)

My own interest in what James Benning shows me in the landscapes of the American West varies a lot from film to film. In "Deseret," I don't think he ever succesfully connects the history of Mormonism to the physical spaces of Utah. The Mormon violence he traces through decades of "New York Times" articles (is it significant that he relies exclusively on the "Times" instead of local newspapers?) seems separate from the images. Maybe the point is that places doesn't remember, but as in "Los," if you want to say something about people, you really need to include some. 

My favorite of these (admittedly only a part of his filmography) are "Four Corners," "RR," and "Ten Skies." These three, to me, attempt to grapple with man's relation to the West in interesting ways—by demonstrating our impermanence ("Ten Skies") and that our greatest accomplishments, relative to that impermanence, are when we work at scale. I would like to see a James Benning film about a skyscraper. 

He's good engaging with discrete works of land art (in "casting a glance") but even there, what he's really interested in is light and weather (time, too, as another way of considering those natural phenomena). But I return to Lucy Lippard's contention that land art is indistinguishable from strip mining. So, to me, the Spiral Jetty in "casting a glance" is far less beautiful or contemplative than the freight trains in "RR," as complex in their precision as clouds. Benning doesn't seem interested in the function of freight trains—trafficking the materials of commerce and construction—but he likes how they move and how they sound. But how can you talk about trains without crews, mechanics, and engineers? 

Benning's goals, in terms of the moving image, don't seem entirely removed from that of many more commercial filmmakers: give the audience what they might not ever be able to see in person, whether that's Lauren Bacall or, for Benning, the Great Salt Lake on a May morning in 1973. That's a plus, to me, and maybe part of why Richard Linklater is his friend.

Are Benning's films necessarily museum pieces? I don't think so. He has a sense of humor (braying like a donkey in "casting a glance"), and Linklater and Benning both strike me as warm men with ideas of responsibility and justice—but something in Benning feels misanthropic. In the end, it's telling that James Benning used his property in the Sierra Nevadas to build a replica of Ted Kaczynski's cabin and Richard Linklater used his property in Bastrop, Texas, to build a baseball field.

A Fella's Got a Better Chance in the Dark

Me and My Gal (1932)
directed by Raoul Walsh
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
watched on the Criterion Channel

Spencer Tracy, who I never particularly liked, but who looked like my maternal grandfather (who I loved), pronounces "burlesque" as "burley-cue", nicely adjacent to a Charles Portis character ordering a "fill-it minion" at a steakhouse. Other poetry peppered throughout "Me and My Gal" includes "palooka", "bloater" (a smoked herring), "hoosegow" (for jail), "stewbum" (the local rummy), and the recurring expression "a pretty fresh bezark" (pronounced "bee-zark"). Nothing could make me happier than listening to a screwball-era beauty like Joan Bennett—whose last role was the vice directress of the dance academy in Suspiria—whisper such sweet nothings into my ear, and she's a pleasure in every one of her scenes.

This is one of those movies where the same four people keep running into each other a little more regular than they might outside of the pictures, but also a Depression-era gem in line with the great socialist rhetoric of the studios at the time. It begins with a touching, heartbreaking moment when a destitute stranger on the New York docks attempts to drown his dog—who he can no longer afford to care for—by tying a ship pulley to the dog's collar. Tracy promises to look after the poor pooch, and does, and later delivers a long soliloquy about what a great president Al Smith might have made.

From the lips of hair-trigger beat cops-turned-detectives to God's ears—Robert Caro would be proud. That, plus a Thief-esque bank job in which an acytelene torch is used to drop into the vaults via the floor of the family who lives above the safe. I guess it's only in the movies anymore that people eat at a place called Ed's Chowder House and tell the men they love to "park that wad of gum", so that's where I'll continiue to hang my hat.

"Married women don't cheat... much!"

When You and I Were Young, Maggie

Daisy Miller (1974)
directed by Peter Bogdanovich
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from University of New Mexico Interlibrary Loan

The lovely animated credit sequence at the end of The Grand Budapest Hotel includes a special thanks to "our old friends", among them Polly Platt. I assigned Karina Longworth's Polly Platt: The Invisible Woman podcast in my class on New Hollywood, taught during the pandemic a couple of springs ago, but I could tell that my students were unconvinced by my insistence, at the end of the term, that the man who threw Platt over for Cybill Shepherd continued to make great movies without his first wife. 

I mention Platt's acknowledgment in Wes Anderson's 2014 film, released after her death in 2011, because the patron saint of this blog (ill-served as he may be by its slapdash commitment to the pictures) always cared about credit sequences. They are full of gratitude to cast (typically expressed in picture credits), crew, and residents of whichever corner of the earth hosted both for a period of weeks or months: Archer City, or McCracken, or the Plaza Hotel.

In "Daisy Miller", it's a straightforward, gracious 

WE ARE INDEBTED TO THE CITIZENS OF
ROME, ITALY
AND
VEVEY, SWITZERLAND.

In an interview included on the DVD, PB hits the highlights: Orson Welles anecdote, Cary Grant impression, tender recollection of dead pals and lost loves. As he usually does, he struck me as altogether sympathetic and decent in his understanding of life's injustices and disappointments, echoing the timbre of this wonderful film. 

There's no need to return to Wes Anderson, but I liked both "The Grand Budapest Hotel" and The French Dispatch so much for the qualities in each I can only describe as Lubitsch-adjacent, which I think (apropos "our old friends") came to Anderson less through the movies of Lubitsch himself than through Peter's mentorship and career.

The highlights here are Mildred Natwick sipping tea over gossip with Barry Brown in a communal heated pool between a floating sterling tea service, the easy swing of dolly shots Bogdanovich relies on to reframe conversations in the middle of long takes, and the extent to which those long takes serve both to reinforce the strength of Shepherd's bright and lovestruck (with the role, with herself, with Peter) performance and to underscore the artificiality of the entire production, waiting for days for the fog to clear from Lake Geneva in order to shoot a sunset over the promenade.

"It's only a paper moon..."

Cousin Countin' Rednecks

Bernie (2011)
directed by Richard Linklater
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
watched on Tubi

There is no mention of sports at all in this movie, which to me is a testament to Linklater's inherent curiosity about Texas as a place beyond just the repository for his own memories and lived experience. His affection for 1997 slice-of-life East Texas masterpiece Hands On a Hardbody extends to casting himself in a cameo as the fastest deadbeat dad on the lot, but the filtered afternoon light through the pines as the camera cranes into the scene is beautiful—as is his loyalty to the great Sonny Carl Davis (named just plain "Sonny Davis" as he jokes through the credits about his St. Augustine neighbors "digging a hole in the backyard" to cook their dinner). Sometimes Linklater's projects completely baffle me, and sometimes there's no one better.

The Love Song of Sheriff Nat Bell

The Hardest Working Cat in Showbiz (2020)
directed by Sofia Bohdanowicz
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
watched on Vimeo

"We name and love our pets as a protest against the anonymous extinction of countless forgotten animals. Does the legend of Orangey ultimately lead us back to the nothingness it was intended to keep at bay?"

A movie I regularly show my Intro to Film students because of the beautiful way it frames what movies do best: retain the transient gesture, expression, or face against forgetfulness, decay, and time. Additionally, it's a lovely tribute to Dan Sallitt's cat Jasper, who I never would be able to meet, of course, but take comfort in knowing is somewhere, and loved, in the world.

Where's a Mike Mandel Selfie in Dodger Stadium When You Really Need It?

Los (2001)
directed by James Benning
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from University of New Mexico Interlibrary Loan

It isn't that Benning's compositions are cold; there's plenty of sun and movement, and a marble-run pleasure in watching each section play out. But people, not industry, make cities compelling, and I saw a tourist's perspective in the director's shyness in only framing LA at distances that favor vehnicles, grids, and construction. Is he better in rural spaces in part because natural surroundings can't help but overwhelm faces and gestures?

(He's attentive to Los Angeles voices, at least: the soundtrack, recorded in an eavesdropper's earshot, is warm with the accents and languages of the city.)

New York Metropolitans

An Autumn's Tale (1987)
directed by Mabel Cheung
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats

on DVD through University of New Mexico Interlibrary Loan

Rescue from an apartment gas leak, a ride to the station to meet your louse of a boyfriend, late night screenings of "The Beyond" and "The Fly": who better to share it with than the gentle man "with a chin like Richard Gere's"?

If "a country is as good as its people and its people as good as their food", as Chow Yun-fat tells Cherie Chung, then what's nicer than seeing his Figgy drink a can of Coca-Cola next to the bookshelf he made for her Sis 13 in her New York City apartment as an afternoon train rolls by? Heaven is pals (watchband salesman, gambling buds, seagulls on the pier).